Java-bashing is a popular past-time, and I’m no exception, yet Java is the top programming language at the moment by many measures. Regardless of whether one thinks that Java is now growing, stagnating, or dying, one has to admit that Java had truly revolutionized and had defined the programming of XXI Century as we know it. Java had combined and brought to the masses tons of useful programming language features that were previously available only separately or in various niche languages.
Inception
The emergence of Java in the late 90s of the XX Century was surrounded by lots of competition. Haskell, Delphi, Python, Ruby, JavaScript, Lua, and PHP were all developed around that time. Java was striving to become the language for the “interactive web,” but it eventually lost this war to JavaScript and its kin, though the most massive losses in this war Java had suffered because of (now defunct) Flash.